


Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogation, Redeemed Ben Solo, Sleep Deprivation, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-06 07:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20287966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: While fighting to help the Resistance escape, Kylo falls into First Order captivity.He knows how this story ends. He has interrogated, tortured and unceremoniously killed enough of his own prisoners to have memorised the script.





	Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LearnedFoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearnedFoot/gifts).

It’s bitterly cold inside the cell. Kylo remembers Starkiller Base and how the ice used to seep through the walls into his bones. Back before his mask and cowl and long black coat became a shield and an identity, they were simple pragmatism: he needed all those layers to stay warm on a planet that was never meant to support human life. 

His captors have stripped him down to a thin linen shirt. He can feel the shivers starting, and he’s only been inside for about ten seconds.

‘Torture would be wasted on you,’ Hux tells him through the observation hatch. ‘I imagine you’d enjoy it, wouldn’t you? A chance to show off your tolerance for pain. Oh, yes, I know all about your training with our former Supreme Leader. He liked to brag about your performance – or gloat, perhaps. I never did think to clarify.’ A nasty smile. ‘At any rate, as entertaining as it would be to watch you writhe in the interrogation chair, we don’t have time or personnel to waste. You’ll tell us everything you’ve learned since the day of your defection, every Resistance stronghold you’ve visited, every secret your precious mother and her rebel scum have confided in you. And you’ll do it without mess or fuss.’

Kylo doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He stares Hux down through the thick wall of transparisteel and suppresses the shivers by sheer force of will.

‘You’ll do it,’ Hux goes on, still with that nasty smile, ‘because you’ll be so delirious from lack of sleep that you won’t have the wherewithal to distinguish friend from foe. Make yourself as comfortable as you can in that cell, Ren. You’ll be there for some time.’

* * *

It was a stupid mistake that got him captured. A split second’s faster reaction time and his enemies would have been dead on the ground before they ever laid hands on him. He achieved his primary goal, at least, which was to get Rey clear of the hit squad that had pinned her down. There are at least a million reasons why it’s better he should have fallen captive than her.

Gazing up at the ceiling from the cold tile floor, Kylo counts those reasons. Cups each one close like a little match flare to warm his freezing hands. They flicker out as fast as he can light them.

Just cold. No pain. Hux, unfortunately, has exactly the right idea – he knows that Kylo can endure more pain than anyone alive on this ship has the means to inflict. He can channel it through the dark side of the Force, draw on fear and agony to fuel his power. Torture would only make him stronger. Hux’s goal is to wear him down, and Kylo’s goal at this point is to thwart Hux for as long as he can.

That’s all he has right now: anger and stubbornness. Kylo has never possessed the altruistic streak that makes rebels scream defiant vows like _ you’ll never break me _ and _ I’d rather die than betray my friends. _ Thinking of Rey alive and whole offers only so much comfort, because he planned to save her, but he never planned to _ die _for her. All the time he’s spent fighting for redemption hasn’t broken him of his fundamental selfishness. Locked in a cell now with no hope of escape, he knows it was pure madness that ever made him think he could be a hero. This isn’t heroism. He fucked up, and now that he’s facing the consequences, he desperately wishes he hadn’t.

Still. If he holds out for long enough, the Resistance will have time to make sure any intelligence Hux extracts from him is worthless. They can evacuate their bases. Move their assets. Hide or destroy all their sensitive data.

_ Plan a rescue, _ adds a voice in the back of his head that sounds around ten years old and pitifully frightened.

A rescue attempt would be a suicide mission. Kylo wouldn’t recommend risking so much even for a top-tier Resistance hero, and he’s nothing of the sort. He’s quite sure that neither his mother nor Rey is stupid enough to attempt it for his sake, and he’s sure, too, that no other person alive would agree to help them if they did. He knows how this story ends. He has interrogated, tortured and unceremoniously killed enough of his own prisoners to have memorised the script. The best he can hope for is to die quickly with his secrets intact. And it’s looking good on that front, because if the idiots leave his cell this cold for much longer, he’ll pass from hypothermia long before the sleep dep has a chance to kick in.

* * *

They don’t leave the cell cold. He loses track of how long he’s been inside: it can’t be as long as it feels, but he’s already exhausted, the temperature and adrenaline taking their toll on his body. He hasn’t eaten. For a while he’s dizzy as his blood sugar drops, and after that, dull lethargy sets in. That’s when they start to warm up the thermostat. The tension leaches out of him and his head starts to nod, world going dark as his eyes fall closed –

Sirens. Kylo jolts wide awake, heart pounding at a million beats per minute, and it takes a few moments of blind panic before he registers the loudspeaker in the corner of the cell and connects the dots on another piece of their interrogation strategy.

Knowing doesn’t make it easier to handle, no matter how many times they repeat the exercise.

* * *

After a while, they start following up the siren blasts with questions that cut right to the heart of his fragmented consciousness. _ Where is the Resistance stationed? How many ships do they have? What planetary defences are they using? _

Kylo bites his lips until salty blood coats his dry, parched mouth. He tries pacing the cell to keep the drowsiness at bay, but he’s so tired he could fall asleep upright if they’d let him. He tries smacking his head against the wall until they threaten to restrain him. He tries babbling the names of random star systems to see if they’ll mistake one for an honest answer, but they don’t. He can’t think straight. He has no plan and no hope for salvation and the childish voice in his head is getting louder.

_ No_, he tells it, baring his teeth. _ They’re not coming. Not for you. _

_ Please_, the voice says, tearful and pathetic. _ I did this for them. Surely that counts for something. _

Channeling all the rage he can’t direct at Hux, and all his disgust at his own self-pitying weakness, Kylo tells the voice: ‘You’re not worth it. After everything you’ve done, this is the ending you deserve.’

‘I’ll repeat the question,’ the loudspeaker says, dispassionate. ‘Tell us where the rebel scum have hidden their base of operations.’ A pause. ‘We know you have the information. Tell us, and we’ll let you sleep.’

He so badly wants to sleep. He’s been aching for it his entire life.

* * *

Somewhere outside this cell, Rey and the Resistance are alive and fighting. They’re rallying their troops for the next inevitable clash. Carrying on without him. Kylo hates them for it, and he hates himself for hating them, and he finds himself wishing that he’d managed to die in a blaze of glory instead of fading out like this. He pictures his body lying broken on a battlefield, Rey weeping over it and sponging the blood from his lifeless face. He pictures his funeral, his cremation, the eulogy his mother would give and the grudging respect the troops would show. They’ve never liked him, no matter how many times he’s risked everything to make up for his past and prove his loyalty. Perhaps his final sacrifice would have finally persuaded them.

He nods off and wakes split seconds later, shaking all over from the shock of the siren. They turn up the lights so bright that his retinas feel like they’re burning in his skull. They chill the room and then warm it up and then chill it again. They blast horrible music, they shout questions and insults and confusing orders at him, they give him nothing to eat and nothing to drink except sips of ice water that freeze as they slide down his throat.

Days go by. Years, maybe. It’s only a matter of time until delerium takes hold. In a way, he’s looking forward to it. There’s not much left in his reality worth clinging to.

* * *

The interrogators in charge of the loudspeaker adjust up their approach. Instead of questions, Kylo hears a call to battle stations. Instead of sirens, he hears clashing and shouting and rapid blaster fire like the sound of a fight raging outside his cell. 

It tips him over into the first of his sleep-deprived hallucinations.

His exhausted eyes produce an image of the cell door sliding open. An angel in a white tunic looms over him and says, ‘Ben. Ben – no, stop flailing. It’s me, it Rey. Can you hear me? Can you stand?’

She says, ‘I’ve found him!’ so loud it makes his eardrums hurt.

She says, ‘Someone help me carry him.’

‘I can walk,’ he tells the hallucination.

If this is the beginning of his end, there are worse ways to go. But he’s so heavy. He can’t make the world come into focus. Nothing that’s happening makes any sense.

* * *

The sirens don’t blare next time he starts to drift. He’s somewhere else now, out of their reach. It’s softer here. Warmer. Much less bright.

‘It’s okay,’ says the voice from the cell. Very close by. They’re sitting down, and he’s leaning on her shoulder. His memories of how he got here are as fragmented as if he just downed a whole bottle of Corellian homebrew. The world is spinning about that fast, too.

There’s a hand combing stringy hair back from his face.

‘It’s okay,’ the hallucination repeats. ‘We’re getting you out of here. Just hang on for me, Ben. It’s going to be a turbulent flight.’

‘Not telling you where the Resistance is,’ he informs the hallucination in his very firmest voice.

‘I know you’re not. It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything.’ Spoken with patience, like they’ve had this conversation before. It all feels new and confusing to him. ‘You’ve done well, you know. You’ve been really brave.’

Kylo shakes his head, or tries to. It feels like he’s submerged in thick syrup, gumming up his eyes and making it all but impossible to move. ‘Not brave. I want it to fucking stop. Wasn’t trying to be a hero. Just didn’t want Rey to get hurt, but I screwed it up. Now I’m trying not to let Hux win.’ It slowly dawns in his foggy mind that Hux is probably watching right now through the security camera. ‘Fuck you, Hux,’ he adds just in case.

‘Oh, Ben,’ says the hallucination. 

Someone’s kissing his forehead, breath warm on his clammy skin. But before he has time to do much more than register the basic sensation, he’s slipping into a sleep so deep that the Force itself couldn’t keep him out of it.

It feels like bliss. And then, nanoseconds later, it feels like nothing at all.

* * *

He wakes in a bed. Instead of the pristine white walls of his cell, he’s in the grubby medical bay of a Resistance support frigate, attached to an array of wires and tubes and beeping machines. He recognises his surroundings at once – he’s been here countless times before to patch up various battlefield wounds. He’s too groggy to feel relief or surprise or anything other than numb confusion. The stiffness in his limbs and the catheter beneath his sheets suggest he’s been lying here for far longer than any normal sleeping period, and the date on overhead chrono display doesn’t help, because he has no idea how long he was in First Order custody or what day it was when they brought him back.

Brought him back.

Came and rescued him and brought him back here to be treated.

Kylo cries for what the chrono tells him is around seven minutes. Then he goes back to sleep.

Next time he wakes, his head feels clearer and the process of opening his eyes feels less like breaking a vacuum seal. Slowly, welcoming the invigorating pricks of pain, he detaches the various wires and tubes so he can stagger upright out of bed and cling to the wall while the dizziness passes. Then he lets himself out of the med bay and walks until he finds the first staff member on duty. It’s a med droid, because they’re so direly understaffed that there are virtually never any human crew on the ward deck. But the droid has enough personality programming to look deeply offended that he’s out of bed without medical approval, and it chivvies him back to the ward with dire warnings about the words it’s going to have with his superiors.

A short while later, a transfer shuttle docks on the frigate and Rey arrives at his bedside, beaming.

‘You’ve been out like a light for almost three days,’ she tells him. ‘I had to go back to my duty shift, but I told the droids to contact me as soon as you started waking up.’ Despite her smile, he can sense an undercurrent of distress. ‘Ben. I am so, so sorry for what happened. It’s all my fault you got captured. If I’d been watching my back like I should have–’

‘It’s not your fault,’ says Ben. His voice comes out so rusty that she doesn’t seem to hear.

‘We tried to stop them taking you, but they jumped to lightspeed before we could get a lock. We only managed to figure out where they’d taken you because Finn remembered a–’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Ben says again, a little more audibly. And then: ‘You shouldn’t have come back for me. That was fucking stupid. Someone could have died, and it would have made my sacrifice completely pointless if you all got murdered anyway.’

That stops Rey’s guilt-monologue in its tracks, but not for quite the reason he intended. ‘Your sacrifice,’ she says, lips twitching into an almost-smile. ‘You’re always so dramatic. Welcome to the Resistance: we get captured and tortured by the First Order. It’s pretty much our thing at this point.’ Her smile fades, and her expression turns serious. ‘But no matter what, we always come back for each other.’

The childish, pitiful voice in his head says, _ Even me? _

He doesn’t realise it’s leaked aloud until Rey wraps her arms around him and says, ‘Don’t be an idiot, Ben. Especially you.’

For the next few minutes, she holds him close and doesn’t comment on the wet patch seeping through her tunic where he buries his face.


End file.
